Editorial: DesJarlais losing credibility

That's a question for East Tennessee congressman Scott DesJarlais needs to ask himself right now.

With every passing day the congressman seems to lose another scrap of his already tattered credibility. Only this week he tried to wiggle off the hook from an ethics complaint filed against him in Congress.

A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to start an investigation into whether DesJarlais had violated the House Code of Ethics that require all members of congress to act "at all times in a manner that reflects credibly on the House.''

When asked to respond to this request for an investigation, a DesJarlais spokesman said the complaint was simply a "shallow publicity stunt by a far-left organization owned by George Soros and used to further his liberal agenda.''

This from a congressman who got elected a few weeks ago in part because he professes strong anti-abortion views, but who neglected to tell voters early on that he once asked his mistress to have an abortion when she told him he had gotten her pregnant.

This from a family-values, I'm-a-straight-shooter candidate who says he completely forgot that he had secretly recorded conversations with his mistress about all of that and therefore didn't lie when he told voters he didn't remember any details of the affair.

Most of those details that he claimed he forgot were, in fact, part of a court record filed in his messy divorce papers after his wife discovered that DesJarlais, a doctor by profession, had sexual relationships with at least two of his patients.

Rather than claiming he's being victimized by some left-wing plot, Rep. DesJarlais needs to eat a slice of humble pie and admit that he screwed up big time. His task right now is to demonstrate that he can, and will, be trusted to make better decisions in the future.

At this point, it's hard to see how citizens in Tennessee are being served by DesJarlais continuing as a congressman.